Josh Hutcherson Says He Hungered for The Hunger Games

Josh Hutcherson stars in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.

Photograph by: Warner Brothers
, New Line Cinema

HONOLULU - Josh Hutcherson is 19 and has the energy to prove it. While waiting for an outdoor TV interview to begin on the grounds of the Kahala Hotel and Resort, the actor entertained himself by climbing the trunk of 30-foot palm tree.

On his sixth attempt, Hutcherson managed to make it three-quarters of the way up, before he was summoned to another chat promoting the 3-D fantasy-adventure, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, which opens Feb. 10.

Duty bound, he jumped from the tree to the ground to talk about the movie that will certainly increase his profile. Hutcherson stars with Dwayne Johnson, Vanessa Hudgens, Michael Caine and Luis Guzman in the sequel to 2008's Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Soon, the former child performer will need all the tree-climbing skills he can muster - and it's not to finish his many interviews on this day.

He's about to enter the Twilight zone of fame, as a co-star in the much-anticipated movie version of The Hunger Games, which opens March 23.

Based on the wildly popular Suzanne Collins novel (the first of three), The Hunger Games is expected to replace the Twilight films when the franchise concludes with the release of Breaking Dawn - Part 2 in November.

In the post-apocalyptic Hunger Games, Hutcherson plays Peeta Mellark, who joins Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) in a fight-to-the-death match broadcast live on TV. The fan frenzy is expected to be as intense as the film.

In fact, Hudgens, the former High School Musical star and the object of much teen adoration, had a few words of wisdom for her Journey 2 co-star when they paired up earlier in the morning.

"The only thing you can do, through all the scrutiny, is be true to yourself," said Hudgens, who dated Hutcherson during the Journey 2 filming in Hawaii. "Josh does that already, and very well. So I think he'll be fine."

Hutcherson agreed: "I'll be OK." But he wasn't so cool when it came to auditioning for the coveted part in The Hunger Games.

"I actually said, 'If I don't get (Hunger Games), I don't know what I'm going to do,'" Hutcherson recalled. "I've never read a role on the page where I felt that deep of a connection."

His Journey 2 part was a great deal less troubling. He returns from the first Journey adventure, which was loosely based on the Jules Verne book. This time around, his character, Sean Anderson, enlists the help of his stepfather, Hank Parsons (Johnson), a South Seas beauty Kailani (Hudgens) and her helicopter-pilot father, Gabato (Guizman), to search for his missing adventurer grandfather (Caine).

When the 'copter runs into a surreal storm, it crash-lands on a strange island, stranding all four of them. Soon they locate the grandfather, only to discover they have days to escape the island before it sinks into the Pacific Ocean.

"There was such a big gap between the first two movies that this one actually feels like a new movie," said Hutcherson of Journey 2. "And when I first heard about the cast, I was excited, because you would never think we would all be in the same movie."

Shooting on location in the secluded areas of Oahu in Hawaii helped. However, the Kentucky-born, L. A.-based Hutcherson had to adjust.

"I'd look down, and there would be an ant, and then I'd look closer and see there were, like, nine million anthills around us. It dawned on me, 'I'm not in Kentucky anymore. I'm in a jungle.'"

He toughed it out with the rest of the cast and crew, and often led by example during filming.

"Josh was impressive," said Johnson, the wrestler formerly known as The Rock. "I was able to have a partner (in the action sequences), with him. But I also appreciate that he's coming into his own, and becoming a man at the same time. He has great poise."

Born in Union, Kentucky, Hutcherson persuaded his parents, at the age of nine, to move the family to L.A., so he could audition for roles.

The movie industry started paying attention to him after h his higher-profile parts in Zathura and Little Manhattan, and, five years later, he proved he could make the transition to a more mature teen role in 2010's R-rated, Oscar-honoured, The Kids Are All Right.

And now there is his 2012 young-adult year with Journey 2, The Hunger Games, and a co-starring part in the remake of Red Dawn, out in theatres by November.

"I was always the kid putting on a show,'' said Hutcherson. "I remember I got my hands on a phone book at age nine, and looked up local acting agents, and told them, 'Hi, my name is Josh, and I'm going to be a movie star.'"

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